Kay Ryan (San Jose, CA, 1945), former U.S. poet laureate, recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and author of several collections of poetry, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, published by Grove Press.
The Pulitzer citation calls the book "a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind."
Finalists in the poetry category also included The Common Man, by Maurice Manning (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Break the Glass, by Jean Valentine (Copper Canyon Press).
Further reading:
The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners. Poetry (Pulitzer.org)
Kay Ryan, The Art of Poetry No. 94 (The Paris Review)
Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate (The New York Times)
Stealthy Insights Amid Short Phrases (The New York Times)
Poet Kay Ryan On Words, Writing (NPR)
Poems that turn ordinary things grand (SFGate)
Catching Up with Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate, at the National Book Festival (The Washington Post)
Kay Ryan at the Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Library of Congress
